It was, apparently, just a one-day “dollar” reprieve for the crude complex as oil prices are pounded today across the board even after the FOMC statement (leak) release. Unsurprisingly, copper joined the depression as the September futures price traded as low as $2.2605 this morning ($2.273 as of this writing). That is, of course, a new cycle low in copper [...]
I am lowering our risk budget this month based on several factors. For the moderate risk investor, the allocation between risk assets and bonds moves to a defensive 40/60 versus the benchmark of 60/40 and last month's 50/50. Credit spreads have resumed widening as crude oil prices have resumed their downtrend. The downtrend in high yield credit prices may be [...]
Repo rates absolutely surged at month-end, LIBOR jumped a few more basis points and the eurodollar curve is bid almost everywhere in large chunks. Commodities continue to get smashed, especially crude oil, and currencies are devaluing in almost equally large portions. Even the treasury market is somewhat sporting the tell-tale collateral calls. In short, the “dollar” problems continue into this [...]
The “dollar” problems continued this morning as several proxies continued toward new lows. Copper fell to as low as $2.342 (July contract still) while crude is down close to $47 in the front months. The back end of the WTI curve, perhaps more importantly with respect to growth and fundamentals tied to the “dollar”, fell to new lows. The Brazilian [...]
The last year has been a tough one for investors. There are a few places one could have booked a double digit gain in the last 12 months but not many and certainly not in assets that are in the standard portfolio. Currency hedged ETFs for European and Japanese stocks produced big gains but a lot of the gain was [...]
If there is something different about the “dollar” in July it is that it has been in widespread pressure on funding. From early May to the beginning of July, the “dollar” was more hit and miss with only regional or limited disruption. Crude prices, for example, rising since the March FOMC, stopped but then traded sideways rather than appreciably lower. [...]
With Greece eliciting full uncertainty across the global financial complex, it isn’t unsurprising to see “dollar” proxies indicating tightness in almost uniform fashion. There isn’t as much a cascade, yet, as there had been in early October and early December last year, but the movement has finally coalesced. The “dollar” world had begun what looks in hindsight a slow turn [...]
There have been, in the past year, two great inflections in wholesale finance. The first was in late June as the “dollar” began to rise, thus signaling a massive shift in balance sheet mechanics, the modern “money supply” that so confuses economists. That is why they at first enthusiastically embraced the “strong dollar” as that anachronistic interpretation seemed on the [...]
An old Wall Street saying opines that one shouldn't "fight the Fed" and it is said to be good advice. The popular belief about this saying is that it means one should embrace risk when the Fed is easing because ultimately the goal of the easing (more growth) will be accomplished. When the Fed is tightening one should shun risk, assuming that [...]
Part 1 is here, the history of defining systemic operation since 1907. The quest over equality or the “right” to impose optimal outcomes is one that cannot go backward. The inevitable failures lead no duty to re-assess overall, but only the means by which the results are to be commanded. That was the essence of Triffin’s Paradox, which was only [...]
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